"Certainly the first Elite incarnation will be a single player game, that supports multiplayer, but we're not talking thousands, we're talking tens of players."

Whit that i guess it wont be an MMORPG. But have the multiplayer features that allow to play over LAN or Internet whit up to 10 or 20 players.

Thos multiplayer games tend to be turn based if its an strategy game or a pure FPS game where u go head to head.
Maybe it will be 10 vs 10. Alliance vs Impire in a shorted down universe.

Destroy/defend each others base etc.

Well for me i really dont care if Elite IV will have multiplayer feature cuz i look most forward to the single player game and hope it will be a never_ending_game that also allow/have the feature that the players/community easily can expand missions, BBS. Modification friendly game.
I also hope that the longer you play the more of the universe will be expanded by NPC AI. New starports etc. Or that could be left to the community to mod/expand?
Also possibility to leave your ship when you have landed and walk the town
Ops, start to be a wish list here hehehe.

Of course i will play the MP part also but that is not the most important aspect for me.

If its gona be a Elite MMORPG in the future i will for sure play it but i think its nearly impossible to create a game based on an unfinity universe that also are time controled by the player (stardreamer)
Although a cool feature would be if you could be an explorer to search for new worlds to populate or to industrialise.

First planet you find would be named after the player as a reward
Also possibilitys to own a starport.

Darn iam startig to droool here now whit all the features and possibilitys i can se in a game like that hehe.

Well iam glad Mr. Braben have gived us some more info regarding Elite IV so now i have even more big hopes to se my ultimate game come thrue.

Too true. Whatever Frontier's ultimate plans for the franchise, I can see no good reason for not having kept the game updated. Even GTASA has a working multiplayer mod. Why does Elite need nanosecond ping times if every other game manages with dial-up modems? Even if this was necessary for the kind of details they wanted to implement, why not just shelve those features until they become feasible, and release (ie. cash in on) further updates anyway?

As we've all been saying all along, the existing Frontier engine is fine, and could easily be updated with decent graphics and more missions. Is that so much to ask for? Frontier could have been making millions off the back of Elite, with just minor updates every few years. Instead we have to wait for quantum computers and AI worthy of full Human Rights???

LOL that's a fairly unfair comparison to make. Duke Nukem had neither the depth nor the potential that Elite has always had. DN was always just going to be another FPS bit of eye candy - and in my opinion there is enough of that pap out there to last a life time.

E4s market potential wont be based around it's gestation period, rather for its impact for immersiveness (not sure if that is actually a word) and innovation.

How long has it been now? 6? 7 years? The same worthless information fed to us, like giving sausage shaped plastic to a starving dog.

I simply see no reason for Mr Braben's reticence to give firm details to his fans, many of whom, like myself, have for over 20 years regarded him as one of the finest game programmers to have ever lived, who have given our pocket money, our wages to buy his games, even buying the same game on different platforms.

Why not tell us what stage of development Elite 4 is at? Why not give us a rough idea of when he hopes to release it? Whether it will ever be released! Why keep teasing us?

I hate the fact that I'm writing this rant, as I don't want to, I have incredible respect for what Mr Braben has achieved, but it's getting to the point of almost being a p*ss-take.

That much I agree with, as it will lead to a less buggy, more complete launch, back how games used to be - IE, playable out of the box, not waiting for a patch or update to make it work properly (yes, I know games are more complicated now, but still..).

Problem is though, with a development cycle that goes on for so long, its like painting the humber bridge. By the time you have re-coated the last section, you have to go back and start again because the first one you did is looking a bit tatty.

If the development has been constant all this time, then maybe the graphics engine was 2002, and has to be reworked for 2006, then they redo the physics from 2003, and the AI from 2004, and by the time they've done all that, in 2008, the graphics will need redoing again. I can just see it all being stuck in an endless loop of the pursuit of the perfect game.

Problem is though, with a development cycle that goes on for so long, its like painting the humber bridge. By the time you have re-coated the last section, you have to go back and start again because the first one you did is looking a bit tatty.

If the development has been constant all this time, then maybe the graphics engine was 2002, and has to be reworked for 2006, then they redo the physics from 2003, and the AI from 2004, and by the time they've done all that, in 2008, the graphics will need redoing again. I can just see it all being stuck in an endless loop of the pursuit of the perfect game.

LOL good analogy, however it is not entirely accurate. The beauty of dev tools these days are that the actual game structure and AI etc. can be developed as and when you desire, the actual visual side of it, whilst time intensive, is reduced by tools such as Microsoft's XNA.

I'm not attempting to belittle the amount of time and effort put in the game visual development, as the art department still have their work cut out for them, but the rendering and the such that previously had to be developed along with the games have been made a little easier by XNA and accessed using C#. Game graphics may be updated relatively easily when compared to the actual gameplay code itself.

Aside from all of that, Frontier has been working on other game technology within the likes of The Outsider that can be utilised in a (guessing here) modular way, i.e. the AI and the open ended structure of gameplay. Of course we'll have to see how this impacts gameplay when the games actually get released. Similarly the graphics engine used in The Outsider is not singularly restricted to that one game, and as I have mentioned before flying into one of The Outsider scenery's gets me well interested in what E4 may potentially look like.

So we put that essentially on indefinite hold at that point because I knew it wasn't going to work well. And I'd rather not do it, than do something that didn't work well.

By the sounds of things it hasn't been in continuous development. It sounds like they designed a game back in 2000, then did other games until now. Soon they will make the Outsider (which parts of will be canibalised for when they make Elite IV), then they will make Elite IV based on the 2000 design and some of the features from The Outsider.

I'm really pleased with that article on CVG online, its answered a few questions about the reasons behind the delay and clears up David's plans for Elite IV.

I'm glad that E4 will be a single player game first and foremost. What I'd love to see from a multiplayer point of view is a cooperative mode. If the game was clever enough, allowed avatars to change their clothes, had complex social interactions, I could even see me convincing my wife to play it with me in multiplayer mode.

She'd never play a computer game by herself (other than solitaire), but she enjoyed playing Diablo II in cooperative mode with me. The main components of the gameplay she enjoyed with D2 was finding items that fitted her costume and gathering interesting treasure. I'm sure there is scope for a truly revolutionary game like E4 to encompass more feminine gameplay styles along with the conventional macho gameplay style.

The other concept I'd like with cooperative multiplayer is to have an ongoing campaign that I could play with friends over the internet. It would have to be hosted on one player's PC, but once that player has loaded the game back up, we should be able to connect and our small fleet resume our adventure whee we left off last time.

My POV on Mr. Braben Vision

He says there are two Project Designs. One is a Multiplayer, the other a Single-Player with basic multiplayer... While I'm not really interested in a MMO version of Elite, I can see why they may want to go that way...

The single-player with Multiplayer support is what really excite's me. Elite has always been a single-player game.. And I truly believe that is what the majority of fans want.. But if you can throw in some Co-Op play, that could make it even better... Freelancer did this... That game, while not even close to Elite... had a way so you could setup your own persistent server... And allow access for others or just your friends to play on your own custom server... A very nice feature...

The Big Problem with an MMO, is you have to deal with griefers, and people that hack & cheat the system... Plus some people just don't want that...

Elite is a personal experience, and it should stay true to it's roots...